Why do we deliberately fool ourselves?

You're naïve, to put it as kindly as possible. After the passage of the Enabling Act, Hitler was free to do as he pleased. "Subjugated belief?" Is that supposed to be sensible English? After the Enabling Act, the government was free to conscript whomever it chose. If you refused military service because of your scruples, they were free to imprison you, or to stand you up against a wall and shoot you.

As usual, you're as slippery as an eel. What do you allege the massacres in Rwanda have to do with your goofy attempt to impugn Catholicism as somehow responsible for Hitler and the NSDAP? Balked at one point, you go shooting off on a tangent.

It happened to a few. Because my point was intended to be, not about Naziism, nor about Catholicism in general, but about religion and particularly religious leaders who, having assumed authority over their flocks, habitually sided with political and commercial authority, and provided no authority at all.

It was never the case, in WWII, of religion leading the way. The clergy simply took the side of whomever they believed could maintain their powers.

Disclaimer:
There are examples of individual clergy of all faiths who stood firm.

It wasn't a case of religion leading the way in Rwanda, either. That was ethnic, it was tribal warfare. Because the clergy jumped on the band wagon doesn't mean they were either responsible, or leaders.

Right.
Certainly less than a moral high ground

Nobody ever has the "moral high ground," including phony, self-righteous and sanctimonious types who take any opportunity to play holier than thou with those who hold different sets of belief.

So long as each of us are inluding ourselves, I agree

I suggest that you never include yourself and your holy roller community.

Late to this conversation, and am still on the first page, but did anyone else point out what completely piss poor definition of atheism this is ?

Some people base their definitions from their own religious belief system.

My "thesis" is less about history than it is about human nature, which seems to be what the originating question was all about. If there are overarching historical principles (and I tend to agree with you that there are not) it would be because history is essentially the tale of human activity and human nature is fairly predictable. Of course history is also the tale of exceptional humans who tend to break with predictable patterns. In any case, I am in complete agreement that "power and money trump religion every time" which, of course, was my point.

Tangentially, I used "base" to describe the primal nature of the desires for power and wealth (in the sense of abundant resources), but it can be used as a synonym for corrupt or coarse so perhaps it was a poor choice of words. The desire for power and wealth is not always vile, but usually if it leads to the slaughter of other people, it is.

I don't think it would be appropriate to use the term or its negative synonyms in the context of primate warfare or perhaps prehistorical human conflicts. I am wondering, though, if there have been any historical wars that were fought primarily for resources needed for one side to survive. Are you aware of any?

And my experience is that many, if not most, of the people who toss around general accusations of closed mindedness, tend to mean that those accused don't agree with them, and can't be persuaded by their brilliant insight.

I had an answer right away to that one, but i've wanted to take my time so as to produce a coherent answer. Basically, the answer is yes, far more often than not.

Jared Diamond asserts that the tribal people of Papua-New Guinea, whenever they encounter other tribesmen, immediately attempt to murder them. He has extrapolated that to some sort of ethno-cultural rule. Many, which is to say, many dozens of contemporary ethnologists and anthropologists disagree with him, and all have their counter examples. My opinion is that such behavior is a product of the relative resource poverty of the people involved. PNG would seem to be a potentially rich area, with lush forests. However, it is very mountainous, and the tribal people of PNG are not pastoralists (they don't herd animals) and they are the most primitive form of agriculturalists--they plant yams and then wander around a wide range looking for game and forage foods until it is time to go dig up (and eat) the yams. Under those conditions, it is easy to see why any other tribal joker who comes along would be perceived as a threat. Mr. Diamond is given to sweeping generalizations based on very little evidence.

Agriculture arose, for as far as we know, because two conditions were fulfilled. Game was abundant (antelope in the middle east and deer in northern China), as were forage foods. So much so, that the small, scattered bands of humans could live a life of abundance without migrating, and without coming into conflict with their neighbors. It didn't take long for them to become farmers. This was in the period beginning 15,000 years ago, roughly the end of the last ice age. Human populations were, at the start of the period, rather small, probably numbering in the tens of thousands at most. The development of settled agriculture (circa 10,000 years ago), unsurprisingly, lead to dramatic population increases. Those were held in check by regular and brief climactic changes which made agriculture chancy. About 7500 to 7000 years ago, people began using copper along with their stone tools (the oldest verified site for the smelting of copper--it doesn't need to be heated to be used, but if smelted, can be poured to make specific tools--in Serbia 7000 years ago--in the Balkans, not the middle east). The bronze age follows only very slowly as people learned to alloy copper to produce bronze and brass, much harder substances. At about the same time, the first known temple society arose, in Sumer. We don't really know much about where the Sumerians came from. The only thing which can be said with any certainty is that, based on their language, they were not Semites. But even the name is semitic--it comes from the Akkadian language, and the Akkadians were semitic. All of the semitic people of the middle east probably are descended from the Akkadians, or from the same root stock.

The Akkadian word for them, Sumeru, might mean bright lords--but we don't know if they are referring to priests or local, petty kings. There is a fair amount of consensus among linguists, though, that it does mean local lords, or local kings. The temple societies were important because they were able to ride out the brief climactic changes through social organization--gathering all the harvests into one place, and the redistributing them, keeping any surplus from good years, and releasing that surplus in bad years. The Sumerians practiced astronomy, which was very important because knowing when the spring rains will come, when to plant, when to cull the herds, etc., is crucial to the well organized control of food stocks. They organized the drainage of the swamps at the head of the Persian Gulf, and regulated the release of water, or the gathering of water into basins, to assure consistent agricultural production--so they developed mathematics and engineering.

It is likely that the first "kings" were simply military leaders who lead the small bodies of troops necessary to keep nomadic pastoralists at bay in the lean years. (This is not certain as the Sumerians did not begin to write until about 5000 years ago.) Inferentially, though, it was a relatively peaceful time. Over many centuries, Akkadian, a semitic language, begins to appear, and slowly to dominate the clay tablets which have been found (millions have been found--only tens of thousands have been deciphered). It appears that the Akkadians were a semi-nomadic group of pastoralists. Very likely, they stole when they could, and traded when the couldn't. The name they gave the people of the temple societies, the "bright lords," or "local kings," suggests that they had to deal with organized resistance. Then, about 4500 years ago,the Semites took over. They established an empire (there is no evidence that the Sumerians were every politically organized, and a good deal of inferential evidence that they were not), founding their principle city of Akkad (and so, Akkadians). Unfortunately for them, they didn't last that long.

A well-organized society which always has plenty to eat will inevitably be a target for hungry nomads, but if they also have a well-organized military--tough sh*t for the nomads. The Akkadians were well-organized militarily, and the systems developed in Sumer thousands of years before assured that they could support the growing population and an army which will need to be fed if it is to be kept loyal. About 4200 years ago, it all came crashing down. There was a dramatic climactic change (believed by many contemporary scientists to have been precipitated by one or more very large volcanic eruptions), which is now called the 4.2 kiloyear event. It was a drought which lasted a century or more, and it spread from North Africa to what is now Pakistan and from the Arabian peninsula to what is now Greece. It is also believed that the drought extended to China, but that is problematic because some of the archaeological sites for the then dominate culture appear to have been wiped out by massive flooding. The effect on the Akkadian empire was dramatic. Their empire began to "shrink" as nomadic tribesmen raided and were not effectively dealt with. Some of the evidence seems to point to domestic uprisings--which would not be surprising if the kings could not assure everyone enough to eat for generations on end. The last great Akkadian king was Sargon, usually called Sargon the Great, and not to be confused with two assyrian kings of the same name. He ruled for about a generation before the Akkadian empire began to shrink, and he is credited with actually expanding the empire by conquering the Elamites, a fierce semi-nomadic pastoralist people of the southern Zagros Mountains who had plagued the Sumerians and Akkadians for thousands of years. (The Zagros Mountains in what is now western Iran form the barrier between Iran and Iraq, both in the contemporary world and historically.)

The kings lists of Akkadia, Sumer and Assyria become so confused after Sargon that it appears that the empire dissolved into chaos after his death. It is possible that some generals set up on their own after his death, and that his sons squabbled over the inheritance. The Gutians, another fierce group of semi-nomadic pastoralists, soon overran the central portion of the empire, and they seem to have gone crazy with the intoxicant of their conquest. They set loose flocks and herds and drove them into the surrounding countryside, they broke canals and locks (perhaps irritated by the annual flooding which actually made the fields rich) and they plundered every town and village, probably just looking for food. They last only little more than a generation.

In this same period, the Old Kingdom collapsed in Egypt. The Hittites began to rise to power (they were originally only active in central Anatolia, but about 3600 years ago, they began using iron, and played hell with the Assyrians). The Assyrians, a semitic people, probably descended from the Akkadians who had once ruled northern Iraq and who intermarried with the local people, were the most immediate beneficiaries of the collapse of the Akkadian empire.

So there was much warfare, few wars as we would recognize them, and almost constant raiding whenever an opportunistic tribe or people could get away with it. It all revolved around the most basic of resources--food.

Cultural success can lead to warfare, too. If a population expands because they become good at organizing their resources, but they don't go the temple society route, they may just embark on a career of conquest for that other great, desirable resource, land. I'll leave that discussion for another time.

Fighting for resources is the most common cause of warfare, in my never humble opinion.

Thank you for that brilliant insight.

hehehehehe . . .

Your quite welcome.

Thanks for that, (it was quite interesting) but I meant what I would call historically documented wars. That is to say wars for which there is detailed historical records from multiple sources.

It makes perfect sense that relatively small groups of early humans would find themselves in conflict over limited resources and that such conflicts might escalate to violent interactions or warfare. In addition to food and water sources, I imagine they were also in conflict, at times, for women of child-bearing ages; with distinctly different genetic lines (although the latter probably wasn't something which the warriors conceptualized other than in connection with possible taboos about mating with close female relatives).

I would think that most historically documented wars have had a resource component within the motivations that launched them. Whether or not Iraqi oil was a direct, intended spoil of the Iraq War, oil explains why US foreign policy has had a sharp focus on the region, and why circumstance would develop and lead us to that particular war.

Wars involving colonies would seem to be the closest thing to resource based warfare over the last several centuries, but I think that with each an argument can be made that personal wealth and power were significant driving factors.

The motivations for any historically documented war are likely to be more complex than a single word or two can accurately define, but my question remains were any of them predominantly due to resources.

Now you're just dancing. First because there are historical records for the period to which i alluded, and second because you now insist on records from multiple sources. We don't have multiple sources for many events which are considered historically well-documented.

In 851, a large Danish force landed in Wessex, which was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom roughly south of the Thames. The king then, Ethelwulf, called out the fyrd (militia) on a system devised by his father, with the majority of the forces going to the coasts of the Severn Sea and the "English channel" (an anachronism, as it wasn't called that at the time) to protect agains other landings, and then confronted the Danes with the main body of his troops, largely composed of the house carles, the men at arms, of the West Saxon nobility. He crushed the Danes in battle, inflicting heavy casualties on them. It would be 20 years before they attempted to invade Wesses again. The event is mentioned in passing in several sources, with no details, because it was extraordinary. Most of the time, when the Norse or the Danes invaded, the local nobility would club together and offer them a bribe to go away. It was rare that anyone would fight them, because if you weaken yourself in such warfare, when the Northmen are gone, your neighbors will fall upon you to take your land away from you. Bribery worked out well for all concerned. Ethewulf's victory was, therefore, extraordinary enough to get noticed.

Ethelwulf had five sons. His oldest son died before he did. When he died, he was succeeded by his second son, who died two years later. He was succeeded by Ethelwulf's third son, who died five years after that. At that time, Ethelwulf's fourth son, Ethelred succeeded to the throne. Ethelred came to the throne in the crucial year of 866.

In the winter of 865-66, two of the Ragnarson brothers, Ivar the Boneless and Ube, landed in East Anglia, planning to overwinter there. For the Danes and the Norse, such enterprises were venture capitalism in our terms. Neither Ivar nor Ube commanded more tha four or five ships, which is to say, somewhat over a hundred men each, so they had to get other ship masters and their crews "on board." They did this by promising plunder and paying them up front. Edmund, the king of East Anglia, negotiated rather then risking battle. (There is good inferential evidence that the Danes were contemptuous of those who negotiated--it is certain that they would soon be back to take everything you had, less what you'd already paid them.) He gave them horses, fodder for the horses, food for their ship's crews and a big chest of silver. With that, Ivar and Ube could pay their men again, and attract more ships to join them. All they had to do in return was promise to leave the churches alone (a favorite target of Northmen, since they usually had at least a little, and often a lot of gold and silver), and to leave in the springtime, which they intended to do anyway.

In 866, Ivar started north with ship's crews mounted on the horses Edmund had given them and others they stole along the way (after all, they hadn't promised not to steal horses). Meanwhile, Ube lead the bulk of their forces out to sea. The Northmen had a wonderful intelligence service, the "merchants" who visited all the lands around the North Sea (then known as the German Ocean). Ivar and Ube knew that there was civil war brewing in Northumbria. When Osbert, the ostensible king, learned of Ivar's invasion, he sent his main army south, and convinced his rival, Aelle (who may have been his brother, the sources aren't clear) to join him to repel the Danes. While Ivar engaged the Northumbrians, Ube landed and took the city which we now call York, thanks to the Danes. Osbert and Aelle united the forces of Northumbria, attacked York, and both were killed. The Danes then set up a puppet king.

There are only multiple sources for the event in two respects--one that the Anglo-Saxons just copied one another's work, usually not even bothering to change the wording. The other is a confused saga account which recounts the exploits of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok ("Ragnar Hairy Pants"--almost certainly a mythical character). We know that Ivar, Halfdan and Ube (or Ubba) existed--there's no confirmation for either Ragnar or his other putative, heroic sons. So, for the invasion of Northumbria, there is actually only one source. It's by a monk, and so almost worthless politically, and completely worthless as a military account. The monks were fond of angels with flaming swords intervening when the Christians won, and demons attacking the faithful when the pagans won.

Ivar and Ube went on to overrun northern Mercia (the midlands) and returned to East Anglia, where Edmund was killed (and, of course, promptly made a saint). But unlike their previous raiding ways, the Danes had come to stay. Ivar and Ube went off to take and defend land in Ireland. (Always a dicey proposition, because the Irish would attack them relentlessly, for years on end. Ivar was killed in Ireland, and his brother Halfdan was killed attempting to avenge him.) Ube disappears from the Anglo-Saxon records for a decade.

In the winter of 870-71, Halfdan, the brother of Ivar and Ube, joined by Sigurd and Guthrum the Unlucky, invaded Wessex. Early in 871, Ethelred had lured them by concentrating all his stores in Abingdon (as it is now called) and the fighting them as Aesc's Hill (now called Ashdown), where he inflicted a heavy defeat on them. Ethelred may have been present in Mercia when the Danes had invaded--the king, Burghred, was Ethelred's brother-in-law. But we don't know it for a fact--it is inferred because after Burghred caved in to Danish demands (as local rulers usually did), the Danes did not attempt to advance any further. It is assumed that Ethelred was the reason, because the presence of an army is the only thing that would have stopped them, and the only army that could have opposed them would have been the West Saxons.

Ethelred died of wounds suffered in battle with the Danes in 871. He was replaced by the fifth and last son of Ethelwulf, his brother Alfred. Alfred, of course, has become the stuff of legends. But there is, in fact, only one contemporary source for his life, that of Bishop Asser. Asser was a Welsh monk, who became Alfred's friend (Alfred was disgustingly pious, if one is to believe Asser's account), and made Asser a Bishop. The only other records we have are the Anglo-Saxon chronicles. That is not a single record, but a compilaton of monastic records from many places. Usually, if it didn't happen in their neighborhood, the monks have nothing to say. Even when they recount events from further off, those account as suspiciously identical.

The Great Heathen Army, as the monks called the Danes and Norse who invaded "England" (a term not then in use) was the major event of the 9th century, and the Danish presence continued to be the most important factor in the history of that island until early in the 11th century. It's great significance lies in the fact that the Northmen were not raiding, they had come to take land and to stay. Of course, whether raiding or invading, their motive was material gain.

You keep harping about historically documented--are you aware that there is only one contemporary source for the life of Charlemagne? Anselm was raised and then educated at Charlemagne's court in Aachen. The only other account of Charlemagne's life which is nearly contemporary is by a German monk called Notker the Stammerer. It's full of flying bishops and other absurdities, and bishops and monks are constantly getting the hapless and not very bright Charlemagne out of trouble. Do you consider Charlemagne to be not historically well-documented?

After the American civil war, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion was compiled, in 128 books, comprised in 70 volumes. A more comprehensive record cannot be imagined. Unlike modern conditions, in which orders and intelligence are transmitted by radio, and may never be written down--everything of that nature was written down. And yet we still don't know the facts about crucial events, such as the wounding of Thomas Jackson at the battle of Chancellorsville. (The death of "Stonewall" Jackson three weeks later had a profound impact on the war--yet there is no single account that one can point to and say: "This is what happened.")

I've got news for you, Finn--your hammering on "historically documented" and insisting on multiple sources is really hilarious. But i will take it to heart, and never again waste my time giving you detailed answers to questions like yours.

My quite welcome what?

By the way, Finn, leaving aside the idiocy of your hammering on "historically documented" (did you think i just made up the Akkadian empire, Sargon the Great and 4.2 kiloyear event?)--upon what basis do you allege that the motives for "historically documented" wars would be more complex than other (apparently, in your eyes, mythological) wars?